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At an event sparked by dissatisfaction with the George Zimmerman trial verdict and described by participants as powerful and sobering, community members and elected officials gathered Tuesday night to talk freely about race relations in Santa Barbara. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Committee of Santa Barbara teamed up with the UCSB Center for Black Studies Research to host the public forum at the Louise Lowry Davis Center a few weeks after the Florida man was acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin.

Those who spoke ​— ​many exceeded the two-minute time cap ​— ​included an organizer of UCSB’s Coalition for Justice, opponents of the proposed gang injunction, a self-pronounced “gang kid,” a self-identified “white-skinned, privileged” woman, a black police chaplain and community pastor, several black women concerned about the safety of their sons, and many others who sought to answer an important question asked at the beginning of the night by a 13-year-old member of the Santa Barbara Youth Council, Ciara Gullap-Moore: “What do we hope to achieve by hosting this rally?”

“What we have to do is take personal responsibility,” said one woman. She talked about offensive jokes, often dismissed as funny or harmless. “I decided long ago that I would not let those things go by,” she said. “We all have to say we aren’t going to condone it.” After listening to the public speakers, city councilmembers Cathy Murillo and Frank Hotchkiss, SBPD media spokesperson Sgt. Riley Harwood, County Sheriff Bill Brown, Goleta Mayor Roger Aceves, and County Supervisor Janet Wolf discussed potential improvements for race relations such as the “golden rule of good law enforcement” and community outreach efforts. Acknowledging that he was at odds with a few people in the room, Brown advocated for the city’s proposed gang injunction, claiming he witnessed a fairly successful one in Lompoc.

One of the final public commentators, UCSB Chicana and Chicano Studies Professor Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval, said, “My all-time favorite band says anger is a gift. There will be something that comes from this. Our hearts are broken, and we start moving.”

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Although there is no proof that what happened to Trayvon Martin was racially motivated, the media continues to fan the flames of racial conflict.

Gang injunctions, self-loathing apoligetic white people who naïvely think they will placate Chicano Studies professores, and politicians playing the usual games will not address the underlying issues of poverty and anger that simmer like a volcanic caldera.

While all this goes on, kids of all colors in Santa Barbara grow up while a very small percentage of them have any hope into buying into the American Dream because the place is too expensive, yet the Red Herring is something that happened in Florida while those on top here laugh their way to the bank doing photo-ops for the society columns.

Keep smiling at the camera, keep paying those professors their nice salaries and health benefits, keep apologizing for things other people did, keep passing more laws to profile and arrest people, but God forbid that anyone should strike at the root of what's behind the despair that is behind the poverty and hopelessness that drives the gang problem.

Obviously what we've been doing isn't working if we need to pass yet more laws.

Anytime anyone cries Racism, the new crews come running. And the crier is not questioned, just given play. What's the agenda, social division or viewership / readership? Blatantly, there exists an agenda, so which is it? Maybe both?

Speech can be taboo only if it's true. Here's a "forbidden" observation: there's no shortage of AfAm protesters who just can't pick their battles whatsoever. In mid-July, an armed AfAm car thief in Little Rock Ark fought with the cops and got shot and died. A protest ensued. OK, so the media egg them on, but still....

Also, AfAms can never be called on misspeaking, because that would imply that AfAms on average have a greater tendency to misspeak than other groups, and that would simply be "racist" and "hate". Johnnie Cochran gave an interview to a TV crew outside of the courthouse during the OJ Simpson trial. He made reference to "the fact that my client killed those two people." Hello? The "fact"?" Even as a successful lawyer in a case getting intense scrutiny, he was never questioned in the media.

Point is, the pedestal is mighty high.

So, what gives with the mainstream media? Is it "Down with the old elite, up with the new elite"? That's my guess. Here's a link to pertinent quotations by persons too scrupulous to deny the power of their own tribe's interest groups:http://holywar.org/jewishtr/naacp.htm

“Truth never damages a cause that is just.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

Any truth-speak out there, languishing like a dream deferred, waiting for the arrival of coulda-woulda-but-didn't-have-the-guts-waaah? Be bold, little White people, and don't let race advocacy be the private plaything of skinheads and neo-Nazis! Have you no pride? An alias will protect you!

"Also, AfAms can never be called on misspeaking, because that would imply that AfAms on average have a greater tendency to misspeak than other groups, and that would simply be 'racist' and 'hate'." -Adonis "Don" Tate-

Oh Don, there you go again, subverting the dominant paradigm. Nonetheless, you force me to take the bait, so here goes.There are a lot of white folks who think very highly of themselves who suffer from Carpel-Tunnel syndrome brought on by repeatedly patting themselves on the back. They love to think how non-racist they are while holding themselves to a higher standard than Blacks or Hispanics. As such they would never criticize a black person for misspeaking, or for that matter, using bad grammar, while at the same time calling any white person who did this uneducated, or "white trash". Observe also how they expect Asians and Europeans who immigrate to this country to learn English and do well in school, while expecting those Spanish-speaking folks from south of the U.S. border not to do so. Incredibly, they don't see how racist this is.

As I've said before, we live in a society of apostate liberalism, which has nothing to do with equality, or the lifting up of those who come from historically oppressed demographics. Jews and Asians have it hardwired into their Americanized D.N.A. to study hard and master English as a way of overcoming W.A.S.P. bigotry, yet if the same suggestion is given to Black or Mexican people, the person is either labeled a racist, an Uncle Tom, or a Vendepatrias. (Spanish for one who sells out their own culture--I know you know the term, but for our non-Spanish-speaking readers I make the clarification.

Even if racial bigotry were eliminated from our world, the low expectations placed on the Black/Hispanic demographic, and the self-sabotaging that results from it, ensures the continuing problems so often cited--but not dealt with. A positive way of addressing this is renting the movie "Stand and Deliver", the true story of Jaime Escalante, the teacher who took a bunch of East L.A. Mexican kids that the schools had given up on, and got them to ace the math scores on the SAT. Of course, such successes are thrown into the dustbin as failure is far more attractive.

Ishtar and Marduk! 300,000,000 stooges! Victimhood ITSELF is the new idol! Sit down and don't deliver! Psy-ops is the real enemy (or at least the weapon), and will virtually no one do battle?

Power to the people indeed. The government is seduced, a la Esther and Mordecai, and they know it. The public is also seduced and they don't want to know it. The-flatscreen-tells-me-the-truth. If-I-go-along-I-will-get-along. Ah, the meaning of life in America....

But let us mention that AfAm socio-economic status has been rising markedly for years. Until recently? Self-image issues are a hurdle that's hard to overcome. The horizon of possibilities looks bleak to those whose impressionable early years were spent in degraded circumstances. Oh, the formative years. And people don't want to play a game they think they might lose publicly, especially in cultures where image is everything.

The Jeffersons, Huxtables and Fresh Princes were profitable not just to the TV industry. Bill Cosby & Chris Rock dared to offend, in the interest of realism.

On the negative side, victimology from Revs. Sharpton & Jackson & lately from Pres. Obama, is toxic. But the news crews that race to alleged "racism" are probably the worst influence. Betcha they're just responding to imperatives cascading down from high up in the propaganda industry.

whole place is being populated by mestizos yet blacks keep firing off at white people insisting anglo slavery, (where a mere %3 of exported African slaves landed), is never forgotten. Please, remember that passports are attainable and if you're unhappy here there's nothin like a zebra sandwich under Kilimanjaro.